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Creating fake Paris: why did one man build a hoax French capital?
As German aircraft attacked Paris during WWI, one man had an idea: what if you could fool the enemy into dropping their bombs elsewhere? Gavin Mortimer tells the story of an audacious wartime ruse...
Tucked away in a British newspaper called The Globe in its edition of 4 October 1920 was a short story with an intriguing headline: “A Mock Paris: French Plan to Hoodwink German Raiders.” The ruse, explained the paper, had only just come to light, and it was almost too fantastical to be true. “Camouflaged streets, factories, dwelling houses, railways, with stations and trains complete, and in fact a camouflaged capital, was the gigantic task on which French engineers were engaged when the Armistice put an end to military operations,” ran the report. It was the brainchild of an electrical engineer called Jacopozzi; a way to draw German aircraft away from the capital and onto a fake conurbation where bombs could fall without causing death and destruction. But the Germans sued for peace as the city began to take shape and Jacopozzi’s ingenuity was never put to the test. Paris was first bombed by German aircraft on 30 August 1914, the first time that a capital city had been attacked in such a manner. Four small bombs were dropped from the hands of Ferdinand von Hiddessen and his observer from their Rumpler Taube monoplane. The casualties were minimal, but the wider psychological damage was profound. A little over a decade after the Wright brothers had made the first brief flight in an airplane, the Americans’ invention was a new and terrifying weapon of war. The home front was now a battlefront, and women and children were no longer safe from enemy fire. Death from above There were other sporadic attacks in the 18 months that followed, including the first attack by Zeppelins (named after their inventor, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin) in March 1915. The airships came from their bases in Belgium, but none caused serious casualties. However, on 29 January 1916, two Zeppelins appeared in the grey winter sky over the French capital. Their bombs wreaked havoc, killing 24 and wounding 30. The funerals of the dead were held on 7 February 1916 in a service that brought Paris to a standstill. Thousands of mourners lined the streets as six gun carriages carried the coffins to the Church of Notre-Dame de la Croix, and politicians and other dignitaries walked behind. The service was conducted by Cardinal Leon Adolphe Amette, the archbishop of Paris, who delivered what one British newspaper described as a “moving oration”. “Before you lie the victims of German barbarity, who fell on no field of battle,” he proclaimed. “Their death will help the cause of mankind and will strengthen the vigorous determination to conquer, to reduce the enemy to impotence, and to prevent a repetition of his crime.” But the impotence was all French as the air attacks increased in the months that followed. Paris had a respite in 1917 when the Germans switched the focus of their air attacks to London, using their latest bomber aircraft, the Gotha. One raid in June left 162 Britons dead. The French knew their turn would come. But how could they defend themselves? How Fernand Jacopozzi built a fake Paris A man who thought he had a solution was an electrical engineer called Fernand Jacopozzi. A Florentine by birth, Jacopozzi had previously worked on the Paris International Exposition in 1900, a world’s fair that celebrated the achievements of the past century and looked forward to what the next 100 years held. Jacopozzi believed it would be a century of progress, one which could prove lucrative for an electrical engineer such as himself. He remained in Paris and, according to one contemporary newspaper, “made a special study of electric lighting”. How Jacopozzi became involved in this secret project is unclear - for obvious reasons. But at some point in late 1917, he was commissioned by the DCA [Défense contre Avions, the War Office department charged with protecting France from air attacks] to build a fake Paris in order to fool German bombers. As outlandish it sounds to modern minds, the plan made sense at the time. Enemy aircraft navigated their way to the capital at night not by technological aids but by topography. They simply followed the River Seine and then dropped their bombs. But the Seine is a meandering river that, once it cuts through the heart of Paris, under its famous bridges and past landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, then doubles back on itself not once, but twice, like the humps of a camel. It was on the second of these ‘humps’, in the suburb of Maisons-Laffitte, that the French instructed Jacopozzi to construct his phoney city. However, there were to be two other “zones of false objectives”: a fake industrial zone would be created at Vaires-sur-Marne, situated 10 miles east of the capital, while the suburb of Saint-Denis would be relocated to Villepinte in the northeast. Light railway system Jacopozzi began his work at Villepinte in 1918, constructing a replica of the Gare de l’Est railway station - one of Paris’ busiest - and even fabricating a moving train. Drawing on his years of study of electrical lighting, the Italian used wooden boards for the train’s carriages, and for the interior lights he rigged up an ingenious system of lights on a conveyor belt. From the air it appeared that the train was moving. The industrial zone was next. Jacopozzi once again used wooden boards for the shell of the factories and for the roofs he used canvases craftily dappled with various hues of paint. With a clever combination of different coloured lamps – whites, yellows and reds – he recreated the fires and vapours emitted by a factory during the manufacturing process. The key was subtlety; he didn’t want to arouse the Germans’ suspicion by lighting up his fake creations like a Christmas tree. It was painstaking work but Jacopozzi had all but finished when German Gotha aircraft raided the capital on 16 September, dropping 22,000 kilos of bombs that left six dead and 15 wounded. Next time the bombers returned the subterfuge would be put into operation. But there wasn’t a next time. Two months later the war ended and Jacopozzi was denied the chance to see if his ingenuity had outsmarted the German pilots. Nonetheless, the French government believed they had created an important form of defence should enemy bombers appear over Paris in a future war. A veil of secrecy was thrown over Jacopozzi’s creation, one which was lifted in 1920 when the British press got hold of the story. The Globe had the scoop at the start of October, but it was The Illustrated London News in its edition of 6 November 1920 that really brought Jacopozzi’s invention to life in a photo essay headlined: “A False Paris Outside Paris — a ‘City’ Created to be Bombed.” There were photographs, maps and explanations, all of which amounted to what the newspaper called “remarkably interesting revelations”. Read more | Moustaches, Cossacks and an inland lighthouse: a brief history of the Royal Air Force Towering achievements What they didn’t disclose, however, was the name of the man behind the sham city. But Jacopozzi was honoured by the French government with the presentation of the Legion d’Honneur, and he enjoyed great success in the 1920s. Having illuminated the Eiffel Tower, he also installed floodlights on the Place de la Concorde and lit up several other popular landmarks in the city. The corporate world spotted the potential in Jacopozzi’s talent and Citroën hired him to create a large luminous advertisement of one of their motor cars on the Eiffel Tower. Jacopozzi died in Paris in 1932. “He attracted world interest by his illumination of the Eiffel Tower, and did much to make Paris the City of Light,” remarked The People newspaper in a short paragraph about his passing. There was no mention of Jacopozzi’s contribution to the French war effort but no news is better than fake news. Or in his case, a fake city. Gavin Mortimer is a historian and author. His books include Guidance from the Greatest (Constable, 2020) and David Stirling: The Phoney Major: The Life, Times and Truth about the Founder of the SAS (Constable, 2022) This article was first published in the April 2022 issue of BBC History Revealed Magazine
Spy, hero, rebel, traitor: the story of Roger Casement
Rory Carroll explores the story and legacy of Roger Casement, an Irish diplomat and celebrated knight of the British empire, whose bold commitment to the cause of Ireland's Home Rule saw him both celebrated as a hero and condemned as a traitor
Rory Carroll unpacks the dramatic final years of Roger Casement – an Irish diplomat and nationalist whose tangled legacy includes heroism, betrayal, and personal scandal. Carroll tells Elinor Evans about how Casement's support of Irish Home Rule in the early 20th century morphed into a bold plan. As the First World War raged on, and Britain's attentions were engaged elsewhere, Casement chose a fateful path: to ally with Germany, seeking arms and support for the nationalist cause. Find out more about the cause of Home Rule, Irish Nationalism, and the 1916 Easter Rising. Go beyond the podcast.
How the work of American folk song collectors inspired The History of Sound
In the early 20th century, armed with new-fangled recording devices, folklorists and ethnomusicologists set out on song-collecting expeditions across the US. Their work documented music that might otherwise have been lost or changed as it was passed on between generations. Jonathan Wright looks at their work and speaks with Oliver Hermanus, director of The History of Sound, about the inspirations from real history that informed the film
Period romance The History of Sound focuses on the relationship between two musicians, Lionel (Paul Mescal) and David (Josh O’Connor). The duo begin an affair at the New England Conservatory of Music in 1917, but their lives diverge with the US’s entry into the First World War. David is drafted to fight on the Western Front. Lionel, whose poor eyesight precludes military service, returns to his family’s modest farm in Kentucky. Post-conflict, the men meet again for a trip across Maine, visiting rural homes to record folk songs on wax phonograph cylinders – sometimes called Edison cylinders after inventor Thomas Edison (1847–1931). But in a film of lost love, there’s no conventional happy ending here. The drama also deals with class, repression, missed opportunities, grief and the way we all time-travel across our own personal histories so that, to quote director Oliver Hermanus, we sometimes find ourselves “having conversations from the past in our heads”. Underpinning the emotional truth of the drama is the filmmakers’ research into the early 20th century – and, more specifically, into the work of those hardy souls who set out to document the traditional music they heard in shacks, on porches and around campfires. View oEmbed on the source website Is The History of Sound a true story? And were Lionel and David real? No, the History of Sound is not a true story – it’s based on Ben Shattuck’s 2018 short story of the same name – however, Paul Mescal’s Lionel and Josh O’Connor’s David are historically plausible figures, despite both being fictional. From the 19th century onwards, men and women on both sides of the Atlantic were fascinated by the folk tradition and set out to catalogue songs, first by collating lyrics and annotating tunes, and later via making recordings. Who were these real-life collectors? In the UK, the major name in the field was Cecil Sharp (1859–1924). Among his many achievements, Morris dancing enthusiast Sharp co-founded the English Folk Dance Society. This later merged with the Folk-Song Society to form the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS), based at Cecil Sharp House in Camden, London, which remains a centre for those researching folk music. Sharp also collected songs Stateside, in the Appalachian Mountains. However, it’s the Lomax family that’s most associated with song collecting in the US. It was John Lomax (1867–1948) who brought Lead Belly (1889–1949) to wider attention after hearing the folk-blues legend on a visit to Louisiana State Penitentiary, a notorious jail better known as Angola. Lomax was a key figure in building up the Archive of American Folk Song, the first national collection of the country’s folk music. John’s children, Alan (1915–2002), John Jr (1907–74) and Bess Lomax Hawes (1921–2009) were also important folklorists. Some American collectors specialised in particular locales. Several names are particularly associated with Maine, where David and Lionel go collecting in The History of Sound. They include Fannie Hardy Eckstorm (1865–1946), who documented the music and culture of working people and Penobscot Native Americans, and field recordings pioneer Robert Winslow Gordon (1888–1961), born in Bangor, Maine and the first head of the Archive of American Folk Song. Read more | The great American U-turn: from isolationism to WW1 combatants Why was this work important? Generations of musicians have benefited from their work. What’s come to be known as the American Folk Revival began in the 1940s. Along with Lead Belly, important early figures included Woody Guthrie (1912–67), who in 1940 wrote ‘This Land is Your Land’ as a riposte to what he saw as the jingoism of Irving Berlin’s ‘God Bless America’, and the tireless activist Pete Seeger (1919–2014). Many figures in the revival were associated with left-wing politics. Guthrie’s guitars in the 1940s bore the legend, “This machine kills fascists.” Seeger was blacklisted during the McCarthy era. In the 1960s, another generation picked up the baton, which had metaphorically been left in Manhattan’s coffee houses. It may be an exaggeration to suggest that, without song collectors, we wouldn’t have had Joan Baez or Bob Dylan, but these artists’ careers, and our shared cultural history, would have been very different. Building the world of The History of Sound Jonathan Wright spoke to the film's director, Oliver Hermanus HistoryExtra: Ben Shattuck adapted his own work, his first screenplay. How did this come about? Oliver Hermanus: It felt like the natural fit. You sensed that Ben had all of the bigger spaces of the story in his head. When you’re adapting a novel into a movie, it’s a process of reduction. In an interesting way, a short story is a more fruitful process because you get to add. It’s a bit like it’s a house, and Ben’s designed the whole house. And the short story is just the front room. When I come along, I want to see the kitchen and the upstairs bedrooms and the bathrooms, and he knows what they look like. How did you go about finding the historical details that help establish the characters? I’ve now made three different films back-to-back, all set in different periods and in different countries. I do love the process of learning. Of course, we make creative decisions about certain things historically, it’s not a documentary. But if you’re making something super-specific, you obviously want to get it right. The Smithsonian was very helpful to us. We were also able to make contact with community research and historical societies in different parts of America, in Kentucky and Maine. They had all sorts of things that we could use, either artefacts or information about how people lived – the size of farms and houses, and the wood people would use to build things. Were there any details that to which you were particularly drawn? At one point, you show a mixed-race community in Maine. That was definitely one of those moments of expansion with Ben. I asked him, “When they go to Maine, what else could they encounter?” Ben immediately suggested this story from Malaga Island. In history, the Malaga Island episode [where an interracial community was evicted from an island off Maine] happened in 1911 [before Lionel and David’s trip in 1920]. But it was one of those moments where you felt that the connection between community and music – and this migration of people from the south of America to the north, and how the music they brought with them might have differed from the music that existed in Maine or Massachusetts and Connecticut – felt like a worthy intersection for the characters to experience. Considering my own background from South Africa [the son of ANC activists and part of a multiracial family living under Apartheid], it felt like something that gave me a sense of connection to American history. Can you tell us a little about the role of folk singer Sam Amidon in shaping the film’s soundtrack? The story was very much Ben’s love letter to this kind of music, its history and its context within the greater American narrative. From the very beginning, there was a playlist of songs that were part of Ben’s childhood and Ben’s life. The interesting thing is that we had loads of songs in this playlist, but we often had the same song done by different people in different times. And so you sensed how melodies and lyrics would be reimagined, re-orchestrated or redesigned. The song ‘In the Pines’ [also known as ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night?’] became a famous song for Nirvana, but that is a very old American song from the South. We knew that we would never use ‘In the Pines’, which was just too popular, but we wanted to find songs that had stories inside of them that felt like they were echoes of the story of The History of Sound. A lot of them are ballads of misplaced love or loss and grief. We also wanted to have songs that came from the right regions. Sam was very helpful in then taking these different songs and being able to arrange them in a palette that felt tonally appropriate. The History of Sound is in UK cinemas now. It will be available to stream in the UK later in the year.
The First World War’s deadliest battle was stalling, but everything changed when Little Willie arrived
As trench warfare paralysed the Western Front, an experimental vehicle pointed the way toward a different type of warfare – and a century of armoured combat
By late 1915, the First World War had entered an entirely new phase of combat. What had been expected to be a short, decisive conflict had hardened into a grinding stalemate. On the Western Front, opposing armies were locked into trench systems stretching from the Channel coast to the Swiss border. What little advances were made were measured in yards; the loss of life to claim those yards was measured in the tens of thousands. The First World War had become one of endless attrition, dominated by artillery barrages and machine-gun fire. Both sides understood that while their troops could reach enemy trenches, they couldn’t cross the killing ground in between without being cut down. Traditional solutions were no longer working. Cavalry couldn’t operate in cratered terrain, and infantry couldn’t survive sustained fire. But a new weapon of war was designed to solve this deadlock: the tank. As historian and journalist Mark Urban explains on the HistoryExtra podcast, the tank began as a practical experiment – an attempt to answer this specific battlefield problem. Why the Western Front needed something new What armies needed was something that could move forward under fire, protect its crew, crush barbed wire and cross trenches. The idea of an armoured vehicle wasn’t new (an armoured warhorse served a not-too-distant function), but only recent technological developments made it feasible. Internal combustion engines, steel armour plates and continuous tracks finally made the machines possible. The first of these was Little Willie. Built by Foster & Co in Lincoln, Little Willie wasn’t intended to see combat. Instead, it was an idea that was designed to answer one crucial question: could a tracked vehicle move across shattered ground and trenches without breaking down? Read more | Life in the trenches during WWI “That is the first tank. It’s a prototype,” Urban says. Little Willie had obvious shortcomings. It struggled to cross wide trenches, had no turret, and had numerous mechanical weaknesses. But it proved that a tracked, armoured vehicle could operate on a modern battlefield. From that experiment emerged a completely redesigned machine with a distinctive rhomboid shape, long tracks running around its body. This would become Mark I – the first tank actively used in combat. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-73001000-1-1e44f82-e1769688725157.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A British Mark I tank moves across the Western Front in France in November 1916, marking the first use of tanks in warfare. Introduced during the Battle of the Somme, the armoured vehicle was designed to break the deadlock of trench warfare." title="Mark I Tank" /> Rushed into battle The Mark I was slow, mechanically fragile and, resultantly, hazardous. Crews received minimal training and breakdowns on the battlefield were the norm. But despite its many flaws, the Mark I represented something genuinely new to warfare: a mobile armoured platform capable of advancing with infantry through no man’s land. By September 1916, the battle of the Somme had been raging for months. While casualties were enormous, gains were painfully small. And new offensives weren’t making any progress. “General Haig [of the British Army] had launched his offensive a few weeks before,” Urban explains. “It had gone pretty disastrously, as we know. And at the end of it, he was looking for something to try and improve the result very late in the battle.” Britain had only a few dozen machines available and, once revealed, the Germans would adapt quickly. Haig was warned of these concerns but, as Urban says, he “didn’t listen”. 49 tanks were committed, scattered along the front in small groups. Many broke down before reaching the enemy. Others were hit by artillery or bogged down in mud so deep that even tracks could not cope. “And the result was pretty unimpressive. The whole thing was, to be honest, a damp squib.” Read more | What caused the First World War? Learning from failure The disappointing debut prompted serious reassessment of how to use these new weapons. Engineers worked to improve reliability, while crews gained experience. Most importantly, planners began to understand that tanks needed to be used in a more coordinated way. By late 1917, the British were ready to deploy them properly. In November 1917, at the battle of Cambrai, tanks were used on an unprecedented scale. More than 476 were concentrated along a narrow sector, supported by artillery and infantry. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-2165728800-8f5be97-e1769688904608.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="British soldiers of the Leicester Regiment inspect the Mark IV tank Hyacinth, ditched in a German trench during the battle of Cambrai on 20 November 1917. The battle marked the first large-scale, coordinated use of tanks." title="World War One: 1917 Battle of Cambrai" /> But the Germans weren’t complacent. They had studied earlier tank attacks and redesigned their trenches, widening them beyond the known crossing ability of British machines. “They thought this would stop the tanks,” Urban explains. “But the British had an answer.” Each tank carried a massive bundle of brushwood – a fascine – which could be dropped into a trench to create a temporary bridge. When the attack began, tanks rolled forward, fascines were deployed, and trenches were crossed. “When the German soldiers realised what was happening, there was mass panic,” Urban explains. “They were shooting rifles, machine guns, and everything at these big metal machines. The bullets were bouncing off.” For the first time since 1914, a significant breakthrough was achieved without catastrophic loss. What tanks really changed “This was the thing that, through all the suffering of those first three years of the war in France, everyone had been longing for and waiting for,” Urban says: proof that stalemate could be broken. It was a psychological turning point, as much as a military one. From this point on, tanks became a permanent feature of modern warfare, integrated with infantry, artillery and aircraft. Little Willie itself never left Britain and never fired a shot. But it provided an idea that helped to end a devastating war. Mark Urban was speaking to Emily Briffett on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Mark Urban chronicles the characters and conflicts that contributed to the dramatic evolution of armoured warfare
From the mud-churned battlefields of the First World War to the high-stakes clashes of the Cold War, the tank has shaped the course of conflict like no other machine. In this episode, Emily Briffett is joined by Mark Urban, as he reveals the dramatic evolution of armoured warfare through its iconic vehicles – and the engineers, commanders and crews who drove them into the history books.
The First World War’s Christmas truce is a heartwarming story – but it never happened
In the early stages of the First World War, Brits and Germans came together on the frontlines to pause the fighting for Christmas – at least, that’s how the story goes. But what really happened, and are Christmas truces just a wishful myth?
The story is genuinely irresistible. On a frozen battlefield in December 1914, the sound of artillery stops, and British and German soldiers fighting in the First World War climb out of the trenches. They meet in the hellscape that is No Man's Land, transforming it into a site of warm Christmas spirit. They exchange gifts, sing carols and play football together. It’s a reassuringly humanising moment that proves ordinary people could still recognise one another as individuals, even if they were still enemies. The problem is that this version of events is largely a myth. As historian Alex Churchill explains on the HistoryExtra podcast, what did happen across European battlefields during the Christmas of 1914 was far more limited and fragmented than popular memory suggests. So, what really happened, and why does the myth persist? No single Christmas truce, and no football match “The Christmas truce is a misnomer,” Churchill says. “It’s Christmas truces: plural.” There was no single, unified ceasefire stretching along the Western Front and crucially, as Churchill emphasises, “fighting didn’t officially stop”. Instead, what occurred in late December 1914 was a series of highly localised, informal pauses in certain sectors, while in others, the war continued uninterrupted. That’s one of the biggest misconceptions. Another is the story of the football match – perhaps the single most enduring part of the Christmas truce story. In retellings, British and German soldiers are said to have organised an impromptu but orderly game in No Man's Land, complete with teams, goals and spectators. It’s subsequently become a symbol of the combatants’ shared culture, values and goodwill. Read more | Life in the trenches during WWI: your essential guide But, as Churchill sets out, this almost certainly never happened. “What people think happened is the equivalent of a Premier League football match with thousands of people watching on a vast open space,” Churchill explains. “But that didn’t happen.” The physical environment alone makes the idea implausible. No Man's Land was not a flat, snowy field. It was a cratered wasteland littered with barbed wire and corpses. At best, there may have been brief, informal kickabouts, most likely involving soldiers from the same side passing a ball between themselves. The idea of organised, cross-trench football matches is a later embellishment. “That whole image of a giant football game, and a big coming together, didn’t happen on the western front,” she says. What fraternisation really looked like The reality of what took place might be more revealing, when stripped of its mythology. As Churchill explains, it’s true that, in some areas, soldiers cautiously emerged from their trenches to speak to the enemy. They exchanged cigarettes, buttons, food and small souvenirs. Some sang together too, especially in the days leading up to Christmas. Churchill recounts one episode that captures this reality particularly well. A territorial officer named George Fletcher – a languages teacher from Eton who spoke fluent German – was determined to arrange a truce in his sector. “He went on this relentless campaign to convince his battalion commander that they should pause the war and have a Christmas,” Churchill says. But he was unsuccessful. Read more | The First World War: Was it worth it? “His commanding officer told him to stop being an idiot.” When Christmas Day arrived, Fletcher’s own section remained quiet and hostile. Disappointed, he took matters into his own hands. “He wandered down to a Scottish battalion next door,” Churchill explains, “and actually that’s where he experienced the Christmas truce.” There, soldiers were milling about in No Man's Land, talking and sharing cigarettes. A football was being kicked around, but without any real structure. At one point, men even began “scampering in and out of each other’s trenches”. Even then, the limits were obvious. Fletcher himself eventually felt compelled to intervene. Churchill explains how he thought, “we need to be a bit more sensible about letting the enemy rampage round our lines”. The episode ended soon afterwards, and the men returned to their positions. “That’s a good example of what any Christmas truces did look like, and it does have participation from both Germans and British,” says Churchill. When and if they occurred, they were brief, improvised encounters on borrowed time. Why truces weren’t repeated Christmas 1914 took place early in the war, before hatred had fully hardened and before the scale of the conflict became clear. Many soldiers still believed the war might be short. The trench system was not yet as rigid or heavily defended as it would later become. In subsequent years, officers actively worked to prevent fraternisation, ordering artillery fire during holidays, and emphasising the need to maintain hostility. Read more | 10 facts you (probably) didn't know about the First World War But why does the myth remain so powerful? The First World War was the first fully industrialised conflict, marked by mass mobilisation, mechanised killing and staggering loss of life. “It’s massively dehumanising,” Churchill says, “and I think the inaccurate stories of the Christmas truces are one small element that we can cling to that shows that actually people were still human and still reasonable.” But even though the reality was less grand than the later myths suggest, it’s not less meaningful. Christmas truces weren’t dramatic or cinematic pauses in the war when enemies came together to form friendships. However, they do point to a cautious optimism at a moment when it was still possible, early in the conflict, for enemies to recognise each other’s shared values. It was an optimism that wouldn’t last. Alex Churchill was speaking to Rachel Dinning on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Did the WW1 Christmas truce really happen?
Historian Alex Churchill discusses the famous story of the First World War's Christmas truce – and reveals what really happened in the trenches in December 1914
It’s one of the most romantic images of the First World War: British and German soldiers meeting in No Man’s Land on Christmas Day, 1914, for a spontaneous truce and a game of football. But did it actually happen? Historian Alex Churchill joins Rachel Dinning to discuss the famous event – and reveals what really happened in the trenches in December 1914. Don’t miss our six-episode HistoryExtra Academy course WW1: Myths and Misconceptions, in which Alex Churchill challenges the most significant misunderstandings about the global conflict. Go beyond the podcast.
Why were these British Second World War burials draped with Nazi flags?
During the Second World War, Britain held funerals for enemy servicemen with swastika flags. This is how respect for the dead could become a weapon of war
During the Second World War, British civilians who stayed on home soil sometimes witnessed an extraordinary sight: a British-held funeral of a German serviceman, carried through local streets in a coffin draped with a bold red and black swastika flag. It’s an image that seems almost unimaginable in wartime Britain. But such funerals weren’t held by Brits with Nazi sympathies. They were endorsed, visible and calculated public ceremonies that held a very specific purpose. “When somebody dies, even if they’re on the other side, you’re faced with the practical question of having a body, [and] treaties stipulate that even enemy dead should be buried with some respect,” explains historian Tim Grady, author of Burying the Enemy: The Story of Those who Cared for the Dead in Two World Wars, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast about the treatment of British and German war dead in the wars of the 20th century. But how, exactly, did such visually shocking funerals end up taking place in Britain? The practical problem of the war dead Every conflict leaves behind bodies. In the most basic sense, burying the enemy dead was a matter of hygiene: corpses couldn’t simply be left to decay on public land. But there was also a legal and moral dimension. The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which both Britain and Germany had signed, required that enemy dead be treated decently and, where possible, buried honourably. The principle was that the humanity of the fallen should be acknowledged, regardless of uniform. “Prisoners of war might be able to take a body to a cemetery, accompany it to the grave and take part in the funeral,” says Grady. “That happened in both Germany and Britain in both the First and Second World Wars.” But that wasn’t the only story. WW2 | The Big Questions Member exclusive | Historian and broadcaster Laurence Rees explains major moments of the global conflict in this five-part series. Listen to all episodes now In the First World War, professional armies often commemorated each other’s fallen. Soldiers recalled brief truces to collect bodies, and officers sometimes exchanged condolences. Enemy graves were marked, and burial parties occasionally saluted one another across no man’s land. The Second World War was harsher. Treatment of enemy dead depended heavily on where and when they fell. On the Eastern Front, German and Soviet soldiers were often denied burial altogether, their bodies left uncollected. In Western Europe too, standards slipped as bombing campaigns escalated and hatred for the enemy grew more intense. Read more | Your guide to the Blitz, plus 9 places affected by the bombings By 1944, with German cities devastated by Allied bombing and Nazi propaganda portraying aircrews as “terror fliers”, downed pilots were actively treated with disdain. “In the latter stages of the Second World War, the bodies [of Allied Airmen] were sometimes just chucked in pits with no ceremony, no care, no understanding, and no respect,” says Grady. Reciprocity and propaganda For most of the Second World War, however, Britain and Germany were acutely aware that how they treated enemy bodies might influence how their own men were treated abroad. “If you’re dealing with the enemy dead, this [is] a reciprocal issue … they want their dead to be treated with the same respect and they want some kind of respect to be given with the bodies overseas as well,” says Grady. Respectful burials were also about image. Funerals could be public performances of civilisation. By honouring the enemy’s dead, governments signalled to neutral observers, and to their own citizens, that they actively upheld the rules of war. Nazi flags on British coffins <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-107416157-79c1ae1-e1758894868183.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This photograph shows the funeral of German pilots killed in an air battle over England during the Second World War. Their coffins, draped in Nazi flags, reflect military protocol, even as they were laid to rest on enemy soil." title="Funeral Of German Pilots Killed In An Air Battle In England" /> Nowhere was this more striking than in Britain itself. German airmen shot down in the Battle of Britain, or sailors washed ashore after naval battles, were often given funerals with full military formality. These ceremonies were not concealed. Newspapers published the photographs of coffins covered with swastikas, carried by military pallbearers and followed by solemn processions. The government wanted the public, and the enemy, to see that Britain respected international obligations. It was also a calculation. By treating German bodies with dignity, Britain hoped that its own captured or fallen servicemen would be accorded the same courtesy. The view from local communities Despite their potentially incendiary nature, the funerals of enemy combatants were not kept secret from the communities in which they were held. “They could be quite public affairs” says Grady. “The bodies would be taken through local streets to a cemetery because you have to get to the cemetery somehow,” Grady explains. Residents lined roads as the coffins passed, a reminder that the war was not just fought abroad but had reached their own towns. “There was occasional resistance, but for the most part, people seemed to understand they’ve got to be buried somewhere,” Grady notes. The treatment of enemy dead during the Second World War was as much about reciprocity, image and propaganda as it was about hygiene and legal obligations. Respectful burials were staged to show the world that Britain behaved honourably, even towards those who had killed its citizens. The sight of Nazi flags on coffins in British cemeteries spoke to a wartime logic: in treating the enemy’s dead with dignity, Britain hoped to safeguard the dignity of its own. Tim Grady was speaking to Emily Briffett on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
How a forgotten law helped women’s football conquer the world – but only by accident
A landmark US law passed more than 50 years ago helped build the world’s most successful national women’s football team. Historian Jean Williams explains how Title IX changed the game, and why the rest of the world is still playing catch-up
For decades, the United States has been a dominant force in women’s football; soccer. With four World Cup titles and multiple Olympic golds, the US women’s national team has become synonymous with international success and sporting achievement. Meanwhile, their male counterparts – while showing some intermittent signs of growth or progress – have rarely posed a serious threat on the global stage. What explains such a stark divide between the two? According to historian Jean Williams, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, the answer isn’t about innate talent or superior tactics: it’s about small details within US federal law. “It’s because of a law called Title IX, enacted in 1972,” says Williams. Title IX: the game-changing law Passed in 1972 as part of President Richard Nixon’s civil rights Education Amendments (the that the Watergate scandal would break, toppling the infamous president two years later), Title IX was designed to prohibit sex-based discrimination in any education programme receiving federal funding. Though not originally intended to transform access to sport, its impact on American athletics – particularly women’s sport – was profound. Read more | The 5 most notorious presidents in US history “It was an education law that stated: if federal funds had been used in any educational facility for male students, an exactly comparable amount had to be used for female activities,” Williams explains. Across the country, in the wake of Nixon’s changes, schools and universities were compelled to provide equal funding for opportunities to girls and women. Crucially, that meant not only equal access to teams, but also to facilities, coaching and financial investment. And Williams says it had “unintended consequences” for sport. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-515119132-37f9c0d-e1753545053820.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="President Richard Nixon delivers a victory speech in Washington DC after winning a second term by a landslide in the 7 November 1972 election, a triumph soon overshadowed by the deepening Watergate scandal." title="President Richard Nixon after Election to Second Term" /> A path to female scholarships – and soccer success With colleges keen to bolster their reputations through sporting success, the Title IX changes to the law meant that women’s sport now became a viable avenue for a college to stake a claim to athletic greatness. In particular, this opened the door to sporting scholarships aimed at women – and soccer. “Soccer was perceived to be less hyper-masculine than American football, and it enabled comparable amounts to be spent on female athletes within colleges. So soccer became a way for the colleges to develop a reputation as a winning college within women’s soccer.” Read more | 5 facts about the history of football With American colleges spending more on their women’s soccer teams, a greater emphasis was placed on the sport, leading to more competitiveness. So, says Williams, a winning women’s soccer team “reflected very well upon a college”, and it was all down to what she calls the “unintended consequences” of Title IX. “Now there were scholarships open that allowed young women to want to go to colleges for their sporting reputations.” American soccer legend Julie Foudy, two-time FIFA Women's World Cup champion and twice an Olympic gold medallist, is Williams’ prime example of the impact. Read more | Who won the first FIFA World Cup? “Julie Foudy, who was one of the winners of the 1999 World Cup in California, could either go to Stanford to study a medical career or she could go on a soccer scholarship.” Williams says that Foudy, and US women’s soccer team who won the World Cup in 1991, “were the daughters of Title IX.” Europe’s long resistance to women’s football But while America was building up its female athletes, the story in football’s traditional strongholds was very different. In England in 1921, the Football Association (FA) banned women from playing on official pitches – a ban that lasted until 1971. In many other parts of Europe, the stigma around women’s football persisted into the 1980s and beyond. “The 1971 unofficial Women's World Cup in Mexico signalled that women's football could go one way or another,” says Williams. As it turned out, even though “the Mexican FA did not want to get involved in women's football,” the hype around the event was real, and organic. Read more | Why are there three lions on the shirts of the English football teams? But that tournament – which drew crowds of over 100,000 people in Mexico City – was not officially recognised. Instead of national sides, countries often had to send club teams to represent them. Even these faced obstacles: local associations restricted access to pitches, refused to endorse fixtures, or placed limits on travel and funding. This fragmented system stunted the growth of elite women’s football in Europe for decades – a sharp contrast with the structured, publicly funded development pipeline in the US. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-2152900599-0bef917-e1753545166298.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="The England women’s football team pose in Mexico City ahead of the unofficial 1971 Women’s World Cup. Known as the British Independents, the team competed at a time when the women’s game lacked official recognition, yet drew huge crowds." title="England Women's Football Team In Mexico" /> The roots of women’s football in WW1 But the story of women’s football predates Nixon and predates Mexico. Decades before Title IX, and before the Women’s World Cups of the latter half of the 20th century, a boom in women’s football emerged from the First World War. “With the First World War conscription efforts, the men go to fight on the frontline, but the country still needs munitions made. And young working-class women in their droves went to the factories for two reasons,” explains Williams. “One is because they earned more money in the factories, although it is exactly half the wages of what the male workers were paid. And the second is that by working outside the home, it gave women a right to leisure outside the home. And so instead of being isolated in somebody else's house, you've got friends who you could start to have a kick about with at breaks. Read more | Life in the trenches during WW1 “And from there the women's football teams emerged.” However, these women faced almost immediate pushback from England’s official sporting institutions, not least of all the FA, who worked to implement an effective ban. “The FA said that they thought the game of football was unsuitable for women, that women were too delicate.” “In 1921,” Williams continues, “the FA issued a ban on women playing on any pitch affiliated to the football association. And that included the big stadium, but it also included your little local club sites.” How did these women react? First, they tried to play on other grounds – but the FA still wasn’t content to leave them be. Williams says, “When women then went on to try and play in cricket grounds and rugby grounds, the FA used its influence with other sports to prevent women from playing on any sports ground, which effectively pushed it underground.” Deeds not Words: the suffragette story Member exclusive | With their radical demands for votes for women, the suffragettes shook up Edwardian Britain. But their campaign for equal rights would see them not just rallying crowds with speeches and marching on the streets, but setting fire to politicians’ homes and planting bombs in public places. Find out more about the dramatic story of the suffragette campaign in our podcast series: Deeds Not Words. Listen to all episodes now The modern ascendency of women’s football Now, however, women’s football is once again firmly on the rise across the world, with the increasing backing of football’s biggest institutions. And after the success of England’s Women’s team in the 2022 Euros, Williams says there’s no looking back. “The victories in 2022 were huge. It was seismic.” She concludes, “It was a huge moment where it proved that women's football could sell out major stadiums, it could get the whole country behind the women's national team.” This article is based on an interview with Jean Williams, speaking to Spencer Mizen on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Not just the Western Front: why we can't ignore the rest of the world
HistoryExtra Academy WW1 Myths and Misconceptions course
While the Western Front dominates most accounts of World War One, the fighting spanned continents. In episode four of her HistoryExtra Academy series 'World War One: Myths and Misconceptions', historian Alex Churchill spotlights the truly global nature of the conflict
View Green Video on the source website More episodes Alex Churchill is a historian and presenter who specialises in 20th-century history. Her latest book, co-authored with Nicolai Eberholst, is Ring of Fire: A New Global History of the Outbreak of the First World War (Bloomsbury, 2025)